Free In Case of Emergency by Courtney Moreno Page A

our patient another dose of nitro. If a patient’s fairly stable, just the two-person EMT crew handles the transport, one driving and one in the back, but when a patient needs advanced life support we’re required to be accompanied by the fire department paramedic, the person who acts as the lead medical authority for the entirety of the call.
    Ruth hands me the stethoscope. “You need to get better at lung sounds. He has rales in the bases.”
    As I put on fresh gloves, place the earpieces in, and warm the bell with my palm, I’m acutely aware of the rig’s every bounce, the shrill wail of sirens, the conversation the medic is having with the patient, and the hissing of oxygen through the thin green tubing. I look wearily to the lead medic for approval.
    He checks the man’s rhythm on the monitor before giving me the go-ahead. Leaning toward our patient, he says loudly to him, “Sir, my partner here is going to get another set of lung sounds.”
    Encouraged by this small sign of respect from the lead medic, I peel up the man’s sticky undershirt and tell him to breathe in and out as deeply as he can. I hear nothing. I place the bell above, to the side, and below the fleshy part of his chest, ask him to lean forward, and press into several places on his back. I find myself pushing the bell’s diaphragm harder into his skin as well as raising the top of my shoulder to meet the side of the earpiece, in order to shove it farther toward my eardrum. At the very least I should hear air moving in and out as he sits here, sucking on high-flow oxygen with exaggerated effort.
    “Anything?” Ruth asks. I shake my head, knowing better than to lie to her. “Keep trying,” she demands, giving a significant look to the medic, who smirks in response.
    Yesterday, at the end of our date, when Ayla and I stood blinking in the sunlight next to the loading dock of Sustainable Living, she wished me luck on today’s training. “Just focus on doing right by the patients,” she said. “The rest will come.” I liked her shy smile, the way she didn’t quite seem to know how to say goodbye, and I especially liked her advice, the openness of it. But now I feel a selfish stirring, a resentment that has nothing to do with the man in front of me. I want to feel smart for a change. It’s really too bad my hands are prone to shaking, my instincts so easily overwhelmed, my sense of hearing so unsophisticated, because my book smart brain is much more intelligent than this job makes it appear to be.
    The prongs dig into my ears, deafening the noise around me but somehow still not enhancing the sounds inside my patient’s body. I watch his slick chest rise and fall, his intercostal muscles tugging doggedly at his ribs. This is the first time I’ve seen any nakedness in a patient, and it only adds to the feeling that I’m unqualified. I’m playing doctor while a man with a busted heart tries his damnedest to accommodate me.
    Crossroads Hospital is located on Hoover Street near Florence Avenue, not far from where the Rodney King riots began. I heard of it long before I ever rode there in the back of an ambulance. Most people call the hospital “CRH” and the city where it’s located “South Central,” even though Crossroads redid its sign under new management about four years ago, in an attempt to get rid of unfavorable associations. Likewise, at some point the city was officially renamed “South Los Angeles.” But they’re still CRH and South Central.
    The hospital resembles a pile of cinder blocks, three bluish-gray boxes, each bigger than the last, stacked in ascending order along Hoover Street. Patients who get a window can look out at the dollar store, Ed’s Liquor, and the taco truck that crouches every day on Florence Avenue. The backside of the smallest cinder block houses CRH’s emergency room. It’s early still; when we pull in to the ambulance lot, we’re the only ones here. I put the stethoscope away and transfer the